The Empty Chair
by MedicOnDuty
Summary: Sherlock returns to Baker Street after the wedding reception to find he's not prepared to deal with a flat filled with reminders of John.


Sherlock walked down the gravel pathway to the cab waiting for him at the curb. Behind him, the muffled sounds of dancing music and peoples' chatter hung in the still night air. The brightly lit wedding venue he was leaving was filled with inane, boring people desperately making small talk and stuffing their faces with wedding cake. Sherlock was glad to call it a night and get back to Baker Street where he didn't have to put up with people and their attempts to involve him in small talk.

He was glad to see the familiar black door to his Baker Street home when he stepped out of the cab a short while later. The road was quiet and dark at this late hour, save for the occasional passing car. Across the street, flickering colors behind a set of net curtains gave away someone's late night TV watching habit.

Sherlock let himself into the building, skewing the door knocker as he went (Why did people keep straightening it!), and made his way up the stairs. He was ready to get out of the stiff formal suit that was getting more uncomfortable by the minute. By that night - after a very long day of speeches, handshakes, posing for photos, and preventing a murder - his pale yellow tie was feeling an awful lot like a noose.

He carefully hung up his coat on the rack by the door, changed into his flannel pajama bottoms and a well-broken-in T-shirt, and put his dress things on the chair in his bedroom to remind himself to take them to the cleaner's. He went to the kitchen for a late night snack and a cup of warm tea before bed, and as he stood there quietly waiting for the tea, which he'd absent-mindedly grabbed from the shelf, to steep, it struck him how empty the flat felt without John's presence. Behind him, the refrigerator's compressor sprang to life, buzzing loudly into the quiet of the kitchen. Sherlock felt as if the very soul of the flat had left with John.

The cup of tea sat on the kitchen table alongside beakers and experiments, slowly growing cold, while Sherlock crawled into bed, seeking comfort in the familiar smell and feel of his linens. He'd watch John walk down the aisle today and out of both Baker Street and, very likely, Sherlock's life. He'd written a beautiful waltz for the newlyweds, but the thought of their first dance now put an uncomfortable ache into his chest. The flat was quiet. He closed his eyes and hoped that the pain in his heart would be gone by morning. 

XXX 

A cold, gray sliver of light fell through the windows in Sherlock's bedroom early the next morning. He was lying awake, staring at the rectangle of overcast sky through the open curtains. If it weren't for the fact that he'd woken up in a cold sweat hours earlier, he could have sworn he hadn't gotten any sleep at all. He was very tired but didn't feel like he'd be able to get back to sleep. Eventually, he got out of bed and walked to the kitchen for a morning cup of tea to help him wake up and face the day. The wood floors creaked quietly as he went.

He turned on the glass kettle, placed a mug on the counter. When he reached into the kitchen cabinet, he found himself confronted by a grocery store selection of down-to-earth teas: Whittard's chamomile, Twining's English Breakfast Tea, PG Tips in assorted flavors. He closed the cabinet and took a deep breath. John's teas. He took another deep breath. It's just tea, Sherlock! He opened the cabinet and pulled a tea bag from the Twining's box.

When he walked from the kitchen into the living room to sit down with his tea, his eyes immediately settled on the back of John's armchair in front of the fireplace and he felt that pain in his chest again, mingling with a cold feeling of abandonment. It was unexpectedly painful. He had to reach for the doorway to steady himself, nearly spilling his tea.

"You knew he was going to leave," said his inner voice in a tone that sounded very much like Mycroft. Of course. Mycroft had always lent his voice to Sherlock's doubts and insecurities. "Nobody in their right mind would wait around for two years. Nobody would wait around for you, at any rate. You must have expected he'd move on. But then again, you always were so stupid."

Sherlock winced. Mycroft's voice was right, of course. He really did expect John to be exactly where he'd left him, just like he'd expected the rest of Baker Street to be exactly where and how he'd left it. Mrs. Hudson was exactly where he'd left her. ("Ah, but she was at Baker Street before you, stupid.") And things in the flat were nearly the same, save for things John had moved to his new home in the suburbs.

Sherlock stared at the empty armchair with its cozy plaid wool blanket and the Union Jack pillow. The chair sat silently in front of the fireplace and bothered him a great deal. He could almost imagine the chair staring back at him. For a minute, he didn't know what to do, but then he put down the tea and began dragging the chair to the door. If he could store it out of sight, lock it upstairs in John's room, maybe the pain would go away. Maybe it would stop putting that awful feeling of abandonment into his heart. He pulled the chair onto the landing and began the process of heaving it up the set of stairs to John's bedroom. "To the room that used to be John's bedroom," corrected Mycroft's voice. If Mrs. Hudson was awake yet, she knew better than to ask him what he was doing.

When he'd reached the upstairs landing, he was quite out of breath. The chair was annoyingly heavy, and heaving it up the steps required a good grip and an awful lot of strength. Sherlock fumbled for the light switch. When the fluorescent bulb had sprung into life, he felt almost disoriented, having difficulty reconciling the way the room looked with the way it was supposed to look. When John had lived here, the room had been cozy: the fluffy comforter, a book case with medical books in the corner, a writing desk in front of the window. Now, most of John's things were gone, moved to the new house he shared with Mary ("His wife," Mycroft said. "You'll want to start using that word."). The bed was made up nicely with some of the linens he'd left behind (their marriage bed was a larger size, of course), corners meticulously squared in best Army fashion, pillows fluffed. But the prim linens on the bed only helped lend the room an air of hospital sterility.

What hadn't changed was that John's smell still lingered. The room smelled of those grocery shop teas John liked, of his deodorant, of his shave cream. It smelled of the wool jumpers, the oilcloth jacket, and John's body. Sherlock pushed the chair inside and sat on the bed, his hand gently rubbing across the comforter. He felt a deep, nostalgic sadness. This would always be John's room. In case he ever came back.

"Oh," Mycroft's voice said in Sherlock's head. "How stupid you are, brother mine. Who'd come back to you? When he's got a wife and a child on the way? You can not be serious. Even you couldn't be that stupid."

"I am not stupid!" Sherlock said aloud, maybe louder than he had intended. In the empty room, his voice almost echoed. He felt like the room was spinning around him. He couldn't put into words what he felt. It was like coming down with the flu. He realized that he was having a very difficult time holding back the tears welling up in his eyes. "I am alone," he said, also aloud. "Alone is what protects me." He didn't quite like how much of an emphasis his voice automatically placed on the word protects. "I choose to be alone," he argued to himself.

"Still so stupid," said Mycroft's voice. "You didn't choose to be alone. It's no longer a choice when people keep leaving. They leave, Sherlock, because you're insufferable to live with. You're egotistical, unbearable, and mind-numbingly stupid. You don't suppose, do you, that John Watson would have stuck around if he's found something better? Easier? More pleasant to be around? He wasn't going to keep an eye on you forever. Silly child. All babysitters eventually leave, Sherlock."

Sherlock curled up on the down-filled comforter and pressed his face into it, trying to take in what lingered of John's smell. (The linens had been washed, of course, but it was the smell John's detergent, at least.) Even Sherlock's extensive vocabulary was not enough to label the emotions that were flooding him as teardrops gently began leaving small wet spots on the covers. He needed to label these emotions. He needed to make sense of them. In the back of his mind, he remembered how John had described him on the blog after first moving in, "spectacularly ignorant about some things." This was something else he could add to the things he was spectacularly ignorant about.

"Stupid." Mycroft's voice echoed around the room. "Look at you. So stupid."

Sherlock covered his head with his hands. Why couldn't he get Mycroft's voice out of his head? What would it take to shut him up and have some peace inside his own head? His heart was beating rapidly in his chest, still aching desperately because John was gone. His John. John, who was the one person in his life able to put up with him, care for him, ground him. Who'd never thrown a fit when Sherlock just walked out. Who'd never complained about finding body parts in the refrigerator. Who'd asked for one more miracle at Sherlock's gravestone. Sherlock had been ready to give his life to keep John safe, but he'd never told him how he felt, how much he needed John. He'd never told him because Sherlock himself didn't understand what he felt. He didn't do feelings. Attachment. Caring. He didn't know how. He heard himself make a strangled sobbing sound that was entirely foreign to him.

"Oh, for God's sake, Sherlock," Mycroft's voice said. "Pull yourself together. You are pathetic. Here you are, going to pieces because your flat mate gets married. Getting married is what people do. They marry, they have children, they grow old, and they die. This is what people do. That can't be news to you." A little bit of Moriarty echoed alongside Mycroft's voice. "All those silly emotions. Boring."

Sherlock would have given anything to shut the voices out of his head, but he didn't have the willpower to quiet them. He just needed them to be quiet. And he needed the pain to be gone. Then he remembered that this was something he was able to do. 

XXX 

Sherlock eventually made it back to his part of the flat and searched for his phone. Normally, it was in his hand or at least close by, but he had left it on the night stand the night before. Nobody had texted him, not even John.

"See," Mycroft's voice said. "You walked out of the wedding reception, and he's not even sent you a text to make sure you got back to the flat alright. Clearly, it's not something of great importance to Mr. and Mrs. Watson."

"He's busy," Sherlock responded. "Wedding night." The very thought made him nauseous. Celebration, wedding night, honeymoon. Happily ever after. And he'd been left behind, abandoned, unwanted. Sherlock scrolled through his contacts, found the number he was looking for, and texted:

Pick up takeout.  
Baker Street.  
Come at once.  
-SH

XXX

Nearly an hour later, Sherlock was pacing impatiently up and down in front of the living room windows and around the coffee table, occasionally glancing up and down Baker Street. His eyes were still red and his entire body felt overwhelmingly tired. He kept checking the time on his phone and was desperately trying to get Mycroft's voice out of his head, to no avail. The word stupid followed him at every step. Mycroft was right, of course. How stupid he was. How alone he was. His own fault.

He caught movement in the street out of the corner of his eye and hastened back to the window in time to see the car pull up to the curb. He rushed downstairs, his blue silk dressing gown flapping behind him. The doorbell still didn't work, of course, but it didn't matter because Sherlock had wrenched the door open before Wiggins had a chance to ring. Sherlock grabbed the plastic bag from his hand, thrust a handful of bills at Wiggins, and shut the door in his face.

"I'll just go then," Wiggins' muffled voice said from the other side of the door, but Sherlock dind't hear him as he rushed back upstairs, automatically shutting and locking the door to the flat behind him. He pushed a stack of books off the end of the coffee table and put the bag down to remove its contents: a white cardboard takeout box and two fortune cookies. The cookies were a nice touch. He threw them at the empty fireplace. He tore open the container and looked at its contents. On top sat a folded piece of scrap paper. He flicked it open and read in Wiggins' handwriting,

Courtesy of London Ambulance.  
Stay away from the other stuff.

He tossed the note down, focusing only on the contents of the box: two glass vials of morphine sulfate, a blue rubber tourniquet with a white label, and several small syringes. He tore one of the syringes from its packaging and held one of the morphine vials up to the light to ensure its contents were clear and within expiration date.

"Really?" said Mycroft's voice. "You're about to do something so stupid and you're worried about the expiration date?"

"Shut up!" Sherlock said.

"Oh, I forget," Mycroft's voice nagged. "You know exactly what you're doing. Right back to it, then. Anything to get a moment's rest from that brain of yours?"

"SHUT UP!" Sherlock was becoming more desperate. He'd never had such trouble finding quiet in his own mind. But he'd also never experienced the type of loss he felt with John gone. It felt like every fiber of his body was in pain and there was nothing he could do to stop it. At least not without a little bit of help from the morphine. He flicked the pale green cap of the vial and drew up its contents in their entirety.

"That's an awful lot," Mycroft's voice said. "Even for someone as practiced with opiates as you. You're not about to do something really stupid, brother mine? Or are you?"

"I just need some quiet," Sherlock snapped. It had been a long time since he'd done any drugs aside from caffeine and nicotine patches (they helped him think), but his fingers were practiced and he could perform the necessary tasks almost automatically. He pulled his arm from the dressing gown sleeve, wrapped the tourniquet around it. He watched his veins spring up, like thick cords underneath his pale skin. He lightly palpated the cephalic vein with the fingers of his other hand.

Sherlock balanced the syringe between his thumb, index, and middle finger, using his ring finger to pull the skin taut. He got the stick at first try, loosened the tourniquet, laid back onto the couch and began to slowly push the morphine into his vein. It wasn't long before the desired effects set in. He closed his eyes; his body started feeling heavy. His breathing and heart beat slowed. The pain was starting to recede. Finally. Finally some quiet.

"Oh, Sherlock. What have you done?" Mycroft's voice lamented.

Sherlock felt the tears run down his cheeks. "I don't know any other way," he replied.


End file.
